Maohden Vol. 2 (17 page)

Yamada’s head angled down. More faltering than a child remembering his manners, the cruel lips quivered. “Pleased—to—meet—you—”

Mephisto’s eyes gleamed. “Your master killed you. Revenge yourself.”

The provocation was unmistakable. Gento didn’t move, deporting himself as a master. A clear sense of will stirred in the giant’s turbid eyes, circulated like poison through his veins, swelling and expanding every cell in his body. In front of both Mephisto and Gento, the giant seemed to double in size before their eyes.

“You claim to be Setsura’s equal. You have prevailed previously, but what about now? Wouldn’t your death sing praises to my skills?”

Did Mephisto mean to kill Setsura himself?

Gento didn’t answer. The giant stood erect. Once again—no, adding the battle in the Coliseum, the third time or fourth time—this pair was destined to fight. Gento had carried the day so far, but now Doctor Mephisto’s demonic surgery had been added to the mix.

A spectator to this grotesque combat, the doctor’s eyes were as cool to its consequences as ever.

The giant’s lips moved. “Master—”

“Yes,” Mephisto whispered. “He is your master. And the man who killed you.”

“Who—killed—me—”

“Yes. Revenge yourself.”

“Revenge—”

“Strike now while you can.”

The doctor’s words flipped a switch in the giant’s brain. He roared, the echoes of which practically shook apart the very molecules of the air. Here and there where only the darkness should rule, painful growls and cries arose, and then just as quickly stilled.

The disturbed atmosphere struck the cheeks of Gento and Mephisto and left behind white vapor trails. The giant’s vocalization had changed even the composition of the air.

“Master,” he muttered, and jumped forward, a perfect physical form that might contend even with Michelangelo’s David. Not an single abnormality marred its outward appearance.

Beneath him, Gento flowed like water. The giant’s right hand carved out an arc like the pendulum of a huge grandfather clock, the scooping fingers brushing Gento’s hair.

In a flash, the two switched positions. They faced each other, Gento next to the operating table, the giant standing where he once stood. A strange aura enveloped them—the burning fire of joy.

“If this is the work you truly have wrought,” Gento said, “then we may yet defeat Setsura. But that is enough for now. Call off this contest.”

“You said it yourself. You are the master. If the servant does not hearken to your voice, then you can hardly deport yourself as such. Relax. Changes can still be made. Including you.”

Gento smiled. “In that case—” He sprinted at the giant before the sentence left his mouth.

The giant’s right foot swung in a roundhouse kick, its speed turning the leg into a blur, strong enough to crack a concrete pillar. The blow didn’t connect, but the giant stepped back faster than Gento advanced.

The stabbing
nukite
thrust aimed at his rippled abdomen fell several inches short. Gento missed the expected step and momentarily faltered. With a dozen feet now stretching out between them, he prepared to cast out his devil wires.

The hands of the giant hanging by his side looked peculiarly shapely and slender. Yamada’s hands!

Brimming with confidence, they rushed at Gento’s head. Residing in real time and space, while moving through a void of its own making, this was a martial wizardry that could slice through titanium steel, the Dimensional Blade.

With no place to turn, the crisscrossing motion tore vertically and horizontally at Gento Roran’s body. A moment later, a black line bisected Yamada’s smiling face from his forehead to his chin.

The giant raised his hands and squashed the wound closed as it burst apart at the seams. Clearly nursing a literal splitting headache, the giant looked at Gento Roran and his eerie smile.

The topcoat fell into four pieces at his feet. He surely never saw it coming, but the clothing was rent apart not only down his front but across his back as well.

Nevertheless, he had just managed to dodge the fearsome Dimensional Blade, causing the giant to miss his target. That smile of satisfaction spoke to his quick footwork.

Due to the giant’s surprise and the severity of the wound, the dark red splotch widened, his face grew ashen. Gento grinned at him like a jovial angel of death.

“Drop your guard for a second and lose your life. But call it a day now and what would we have brought the good doctor all the way here for? Once more into the breach, shall we?”

The meaning of that
we
soon became apparent. A red cross stained the bandages covering Gento from his belly button to his chest, thickening by the second, already spreading out and seeping down.

The giant hadn’t missed his mark after all.

Gento raised his hands and pressed them against his temples. “The terms here are the same,” he said. “Unless we hasten quickly to a conclusion, we will both go down together.”

“Master—” A voice dull-witted, ominous, and sad all at once.

The top of the giant’s head opened wide. He reached out to the right and left, arms parallel with the floor. Sensing what was coming, Gento sank down lower to the ground.

As the giant turned, a red line welled up around his waist. Gento’s devil wire. But instead of dismembering, it cast off blood like a water sprinkler as he spun like a top.

Devices within the arc of his spinning hands shattered. Flames erupted from the floor. The operating table split in two. Fresh lacerations marred everything the Dimension Blade touched, before cleaving in two.

Mephisto observed the gruesome sight without so much as the flicker of an eyebrow.

Gento danced on the wind, shooting out devil wires. Every last one of them cut apart by the raging Dimensional Blade, humming as the air rushed into the vacuum in its wake.

Gashes opened up on Gento’s forehead and ankle. Blood showered into the air and sprinkled to the ground. But knowing the meaning of his own defeat, a small smile welled up.

The floor beneath his feet ripped apart. Cracks ran up the wall to the ceiling. Weaving among the intervals in the increasingly hectic attacks, Gento sprang up.

Casting out the devil wires from his right hand, he saw the key to victory within his grasp. The rapid rotation sparked strange changes in the giant’s body. With the red at his waist marking the boundaries, his top half faced Gento while his bottom half turned toward the gloom behind him.

He swayed and fell like a tree, splitting in two and shaking the ground upon impact. Sparks showered down.

“Doctor!”

Forgetting to tend to his own deep wounds, Gento cast his eyes at the arc of the giant’s left hand, in the shape of the Dimensional Blade and Mephisto right in front of him.

Mephisto cupped his left hand around his right shoulder. Gento ran up to him, reached out and touched his shoulder. It slid apart.

“Doctor—”

“It seems to have been severed. But no need to worry. Fixing it myself is much simpler than leaving it to others.”

“That is a relief.”

Mephisto returned the arm to its joint. He looked down at the giant with almost tired eyes. “You will live again, but I’ve given you all the power you can handle. No matter how much we have of anything, we’ll always want more.”

“I am still alive. It follows that Setsura would be too.”

Mephisto nodded. “How do you wish to proceed?”

“There is something I would like you to get for me.”

“What is it and where?”

A mechanical scream drowned out Mephisto’s words.

The girl directed her attention to the strange changes taking place in her body. Her white blouse clung to her wet body. Her slender frame carried large breasts and an ample butt. Her nipples showed through the fabric, though she made no effort to hide it, nor was she embarrassed by it.

Moments before, a shock shot through her nerves, like a cold needle stuck into her ass. As if flipping a switch, her entire body lit up from within as if a furnace had fired up in her chest. The symptoms were initially similar to those caused by alcohol or metabolic drinks, but by now far exceeded them.

She was burning up from within. White smoke enveloped her. She hadn’t yet grasped that the sharp rise in body temperature had turned her damp blouse and skirt to steam. There was no way a human being should be able to survive something like that.

The human body could withstand an internal body temperature of a hundred and four degrees. The currents of heat swirling inside her easily exceeded a hundred and forty. And yet she lived.

Her blouse and skirt dried in a flash. The elevation of the temperature stopped and began to plummet. Though now cooled by equally feverish chills, the girl remained conscious.

“You’re holding up well,” a low voice observed. She turned around.

Standing across the narrow table from her was the man who’d seized her. She knew he was an enemy who must be vanquished, but found herself possessed by his cherubic beauty.

This was Setsura Aki.

They were in what must have been a production planning room, a dreary collection of four narrow tables, a blackboard, and chairs. This was where they’d gone to dry off, the place where the Master’s senses couldn’t reach.

She couldn’t refuse him. His unearthly skills, to start with, had dispatched the rest of her party in a few seconds flat, and add to that the unearthly pain around her neck. But more than anything, his unearthly comeliness drew her along like a dog at the end of a leash.

Despite the demon lurking there beneath the surface, once entranced, man or woman alike, there was no straying from his will.

“Your clothes appear to have dried off. I’ll be going.”

The girl focused her bleary eyes on him. There wasn’t a spot of water on his black-clad person.

“Did you stick that thing up your ass, too?”

“Of course,” Setsura said, nodding his chin at the door. “Stay here until
I
return. Otherwise that pain in your neck from before will return.”

“You’re just going to leave me here?” she pouted.

“Yes.”

“I know all the shortcuts around here. Aren’t I supposed to be your hostage?”

“You are also a burden.”

“Then why did you spare me?”

“Perhaps you struck
his
fancy.”

“What does that mean?”

Setsura didn’t answer, but headed for the door.

“Wait,” the girl called out. “There are a lot of my friends still running around out there. You’d be better off taking me with you.”

Setsura stopped. “Would these friends of yours be so forgiving to you?”

The girl fell silent.

“Everybody knows what matters to them most. Go home if you can.”

“No. The Master is here.”

Setsura turned to leave.

“Wait. My name is Kotomi. I don’t remember my last name. What’s yours?”

The door closed without an answer.

Left alone in the stuffy, cramped room, Kotomi stared blankly at the door.

Studio 13 was located at the back of the building, in the very center of the grounds of Fuji TV.

The further in Setsura proceeded, the hotter and more humid it became. An odd odor permeated the surroundings as the air grew increasingly poisonous.

Setsura slipped past many of his foes on the way to the studio. Like the ones he’d encountered in the courtyard they included men wearing military fatigues, and men and women of all ages patrolling the halls, weapons in hand.

All were those who’d been enthralled. The survivors, at least.

Although their movements were easy to read, for whatever reason Setsura took himself to the midst of their living quarters. Strangely enough, as he drew closer to the studio, the place took on a more orderly appearance.

Serving trays were lined up on the tables in the company cafeteria. In the kitchen, brimming pots and pans simmered over a low heat, fifteen of them. The number of people under the Master’s thrall. The Master must have a vested interest in keeping them alive.

There were beds in the sleeping quarters, and evidence of women’s makeup being used. Even without seeing Kotomi for himself, it was clear they still maintained some sense of themselves as individuals. Far more than that, they were maintaining their sense of mission to protect the Master, and the forthright and exacting mental state the mission required, excluding the unethical and immoral behavior which inevitably resulted.